School of Religion, Philosophy & Classics

Sarojini Nadar graduated with a BA degree from the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 1996. Her majors were in English Literature and Religious Studies. She obtained a Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) in 1997 and her Masters of Arts in 2000 in the area of Biblical Literature, also at UCT. She obtained her PhD in 2003 at the age of 27 from the erstwhile University of Natal (now UKZN). While she was still undertaking her PhD, she was the coordinator of the International Network in Advanced Theological Education (INATE) from 2002-2005. The network was based in 8 countries and spanned five continents. In 2008, she was appointed to a permanent position as the Director of the Gender and Religion programme which she co-founded. She returned to this position in 2014 after a two-year tenure as the Dean of Research in the College of Humanities in 2012 and 2013. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011 and Full Professor in 2014.

• Research Fellow at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (2014)
• National Commendation Award for Teaching Excellence in the Category of Leader in the Field of Learning and Teaching from HELTASA [Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of South Africa] (2014)
• Winner of the 2013 UKZN Distinguished Teachers Award for Outstanding Teaching
• Overall Winner of the National Department of Science and Technology Distinguished Young Woman in Science Award: Human and Social Sciences in (2012); https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/_asset/file/women-in-science.pdf 
• C-Rated by the National Research Foundation (2011)
• UKZN’s Research Award for the Top Published Woman Researcher (2009)
• Being chosen and featured by the Mail and Guardian in the Book of South African Women (2008)
• Regularly featured among the Top 30 UKZN researchers as well as a Prolific Researcher
• Winner of the 2006 UKZN Book Prize award in the category “best edited book.”
• Recipient of many scholarships and merit-based student awards

• Her more than a decade-long journey researching on feminism and faith, and the intersections between them in a post-apartheid public higher education context has taken her down many research paths. Her primary research interest is in gender-based violence in its broadest sense, from physical and sexual violence to epistemic violence. More especially her research (and teaching) focuses on understanding and critiquing the relationship between religious and cultural systems and gender-based violence. She has researched and published widely in this field, focusing on feminist biblical hermeneutics, HIV&AIDS; masculinity and sexuality. She also has a special interest in studying and developing theories of feminism in Africa, and more recently she has developed an interest in gender and higher education research. This has been inspired by a funded Masters programme called Gender, Religion and Health at four institutions in Africa. The programme is in its second year of existence having successfully graduated its first cohort of students. Nadar has been the keynote speaker at several international and local conferences and has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Oslo, Uppsala, Princeton as well as Gurukul Lutheran Theological Institute in Chennai, India. Nadar has co-edited a total of five books; guest edited two accredited journals, and has had 16 chapters published in books nationally and internationally as well as 40 journal articles in national and international journals. She co-edits the DOHET accredited journal, Journal of Gender and Religion in Africa, the only academic journal in Africa which focuses on the interface between gender and religion and she is a member of several accredited international journal editorial boards including Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, based at Harvard University in the Unites States and Women’s Studies International Forum, based at University of Southampton, UK.

• The South African Higher Education landscape has been alive with calls for recontextualisation and Africanisation of the curriculum as democracy loomed in the early 90’s. These calls were made within the context of the Education Development Programme (EDP) by the erstwhile University of Natal. Gerald West notes that “The EDP was designed to enable academic departments across the University to reconstruct their pedagogy in ways that would address and redress the disadvantages encoded into apartheid’s Bantu Education system” (2009:74).
• The erstwhile School of Theology at the University of Natal had embraced this call and had deliberately mainstreamed contextual and liberation theologies into the curriculum through an endeavour called “The Contextualisation of Theological Education Project” in 1991.  A decade later, Professor Nadar and Professor Isabel Phiri began to make calls for the “engendering” of this Africanised and contextualised curriculum. The idea was to have a specialised programme in gender but to also mainstream gender into the curriculum in general. They developed courses and templates for a specialised postgraduate programme from Honours to PhD, and they mainstreamed gender into the undergraduate programme. In 2008, Nadar  was appointed to a permanent teaching position as the director of this programme called Gender and Religion. Nadar’s teaching has taken place within this predominantly postgraduate context and since her appointment she has successfully graduated 8 PhD students and 13 Masters Students. In 2012, as the Dean of Research, Nadar piloted the Cohort Supervision Workshops (pioneered by Professors Renuka Vithal and Michael Samuel in the erstwhile Faculty of Education) for PhD students in the College of Humanities. Aimed at improving degree completion rates and offering academic support and interdisciplinary richness, the initiative was the first initiative of its kind operating across the College in a trans-disciplinary context. The feedback from the students concurs with what studies on the model have shown and that is that the model produces graduates who become critical thinkers and responsible knowledge producers and researchers. Her teaching and research is grounded within a “knowledge and education for advocacy paradigm,” and she is passionate about contributing to the social development of communities.

• School of Religion and Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2011  1. Theory and Method (Honours Core Module); 2. Biblical Hermeneutics: Women and Gender (Honours/Masters Elective); African Women’s Theologies (Honours/Masters Elective).
• School of Religion and Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2010  1. Theory and Method (Honours Core Module); 2. Proposal Writing Module (Masters Core Module); 3. Issues of Masculinity and Gender(Honours/Masters Elective); 4. Critical Tools for Biblical Study (2nd year Literary and Gender Component of Module); 5. History of Christianity (3rd year Gender Component of Module).
• Guest Lecture,  School of Education, Discipline of Social Justice Education, UKZN, 2010. Module: “Social Identity and Oppression” Lecture: “Same-sex sexuality and the bible”. Co presented with Prof. Gerald West.
• School of Religion and Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2009 – 1. African Women’s Theologies (Honours/Masters Elective); 2. Systematic Theology: Political and Economic Ethics: Theological Perspectives (3rd year Teaching Component: Feminist Theologies); 3. Biblical Theology (3rd year Teaching Component: Gender, Bible and HIV&AIDS); 4. Critical Tools for Biblical Study (2nd year Literary and Gender Component of Module); 5. Biblical Hermeneutics: Women and Gender (Honours/Masters Elective); 6. History of Christianity (3rd year Gender Component)
• School of Religion and Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008 – 1. Theory and Method (Honours Core Module); 2. Systematic Theology: Political and Economic Ethics: Theological Perspectives (3rd year Teaching Component: Feminist Theologies); 3. Theology in the African Context/Advanced Theology in the African Context (Honours/Masters Core Module); 4. Issues of Masculinity and Gender (Honours/Masters Elective); 5. Gender, Religion and Ethics (3rd year)
• Guest Lecture, School of Social Work and Community Development, UKZN, 2008: Module “Anti-Oppression and Critical Theory.” Lecture: “The Jacob Zuma Rape Trial and the place of religion and culture in gender discourse”
• School of Religion and Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007 – 1. Theory and Method (Honours Core Module); 2. Gender, Tradition and the Church in Africa (Honours/Masters Core Module); 3. African Women’s Theologies (Honours/Masters Elective); 4. Systematic Theology: Political and Economic Ethics: Theological Perspectives (3rd year Teaching Component: Feminist Theologies); 5. Biblical Hermeneutics: Women and Gender (Honours/Masters Elective Gender, Religion and Ethics (3rd year)
• School of Philosophy and Ethics 2007 –  1. Applied Global Ethics (1st year Hinduism; Gender, Religion and Ethics); 2.  The Ethics of Power (2nd year Contemporary Issues in Gender and Ethics); 3.  Gender Issues in Religion and Ethics (3rd year)
• Guest lecture: St Joseph’s Theological Institute, Cedara, 2007, Module: “Feminist Theology” Lecture: Feminist Hermeneutics in Africa”
• School of Religion and Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006 – 1. Theory and Method (Honours Core Module); 2. Gender, Tradition and the Church in Africa (Honours/Masters Core Module); 3. African Women’s Theologies (Honours/Masters Elective); 4. Issues of Masculinity and Gender (Honours/Masters Elective);
• School of Philosophy and Ethics 2006 –  1. Applied Global Ethics (1st year Hinduism; Gender, Religion and Ethics); 2.  The Ethics of Power (2nd year Contemporary Issues in Gender and Ethics); 3.  Gender Issues in Religion and Ethics (3rd year).
• School of Religion and Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2002 to 2005 – 1. Biblical Studies (1st year An Introduction to The Old Testament); 2. Biblical Studies (2nd year Literary Biblical Analysis: Ruth and Esther); 3. Biblical Studies (3rd year Gender, Bible and HIV&AIDS); 4. Biblical Studies (Honours and Masters Feminist and Womanist Hermeneutics)
• Guest lecture: St Joseph’s Theological Institute, Cedara, 2002, 2003, 2005, Module: “Feminist Theology” Lecture: Feminist Hermeneutics in Africa”